(Closed) Anyone else suffer from insomnia? :-(

Ok, so I work at a hospital from 7p-7a maybe 3 days a week (sometimes more). I’m also a full-time nursing student. Before I started this shift, I was having problems with sleeping at night. Not so much staying asleep, just FALLING asleep; so I just assumed it was the stress of nursing school. Now that I work some nights, it has gotten worse MUCH WORSE. Even when I’m not working, sometimes I won’t fall asleep until 2 or 3am, then have to be back up at 7 for class.

Any bees have this problem? Any suggestions as to what I can do to help me with this? It’s starting to have a Negative effect on just about all my relationships eg. SO, mom, friends.

FYI: I’ve already talked to my doctor… He suggested ambien. My mom has a prescription drug addiction so I’m not really wanting to take this route.

Hi @mcarey2: I suffer from Insomnia. It is tied into both my age, and being Perimenopausal. It sucks.

I probably get a decent sleep 4 nights a week… the other 3 I am up.

Right now I have the flu, and have been up since sometime on Sunday… right now I am somewhere into my 2nd 24 Hours.

I don’t have a remedy (I don’t do drugs, not even OTC ones). I rely on things like staying up until I cannot no more … fortuntately being semi-retired I do have a lot of latitude when it comes to when I do sleep / am awake. I sleep when I can.

Other than that, “my secret” sleep aid is the old standby warm milk… well actually hot cocoa… it does work often to settle me down if I am tired but restless.

But I have to be tired… if I am not tired… nothing is going to get me there.

I do. I’m a PSG, so shift work makes my sleep pattern irractic. I personally would not use amien unless I was deperate. A lot of rx sleeping medications leave you with the next-day hangover/brain fog and you do not need that right now. I would start with melatonin, avoiding caffiene late in a shift and using good sleep practices in general. Like making sure your room is dark when you sleep etc. Also STOP checking the alarm clock or thinking about what time you have to be up, or calculating how many hours of sleep you have left. Never use the snooze alarm, ever.

I think this is not like a permanent/chronic insomnia but more like the clash of your schedule taking a toll on you and “confusing” your body. I’m not a doctor…but I would not do prescription for this.

Try melatonin and something that’s soothing like a hot shower. I take my melatonin about 1 hour before I want to fall asleep. Sometimes I feel it sometimes I don’t. However, I’ve had insomnia since I was like 12.

Establish a bed time routine and stick to it.

Make sure you’re not watching TV, on your phone, etc. Don’t go on weddingbee like I’m doing right now. lol. Don’t give yourself any reason to get out of bed once you’re there (have a glass of water there, tissues, or whatever else you may need). Don’t use your bed for studying or anything other than sleep/intimacy. Make your bed a sacred resting/relaxing place.

Aromatherapy can help. Esp. if you begin to associate a certain scent with bedtime. You have to be consistent with it though.

If you MUST do something because you can’t ignore your brain thinking/planning then watch something really really boring and monotone. Like PBS painting tutorials from the 80’s.

@mcarey2: I’ve had chronic insomnia for 9 years and the only thing that has ever worked for me is Ambien. However, I would only recommend that as a last resort because the body becomes dependant on it very quickly. I’ve heard good things about melatonin. Also you should start an earlier bedtime routine, so that initial period of tossing and turning doesn’t turn into that last minute anxiety, you know where all you can think is “OMG it’ll be time to get out of bed before I fall asleep”.

I’ve had insomnia since college, so it’s going on for a good 8-9 years now. I’ve tried a ton of stuff: melatonin, taking a hot bath with calming lavender soaks, exercising right before bed, not exercising before bed, forcing myself to wake up earlier, OTC sleep aids, Ambien CR…

Nothing really helped. I became immune to the melatonin fairly quickly (after just a few nights), anything with calming effects just didn’t work, exercising made my body tired but not my mind, and waking up earlier just made me drag ass throughout the day and then I STILL couldn’t fall asleep at night (even if I only had a few hours sleep the previous night).

The OTC sleep aids and Ambien CR both worked extremely well, but my body became dependant on both of them. I tried Ambien CR first while in college, my doctor saw that my lack of sleep was taking a serious toll on my overall health. I had the weird side effect of “complex sleep behaviors” AKA walking around the house, cooking, eating, talking to friends online and then having absolutely no memory of it the following day, so my doctor had to take me off. The OTC sleep aids came next, and as much as they work, after a while you’ll find that you build up a tolerance to them, and you’ll need to take more to be able to fall asleep. Both Ambien and the OTC meds caused me serious rebound insomnia upon discontinuing use of them.

Currently I’m just dealing with it in all its crapiness. I work from 2pm-4am 2-3 times a week, so generally I need to stay on that schedule, but it still sucks that my best sleeping hours are from like 7am-noon. If I have stuff to do in the mornings I usually just suck it up and suffer through extreme tiredness.

If you find anything that helps please let me know! I’ve pretty much given up at this point lol.

not full blown insomnia, but I have had a couple of nights recently where sleep was not my friend. Not sure if that was because of my SO’s snoring or i just had a lot of thoughts running through my mind. I’m proposing soon so it’s probably a bunch of stress.

@mcarey2: My insomnia problem stopped when I was prescribed drugs (clonazepam). It’s a problem that my granmother had and father has. I’ve always either taken 3 to 5 hours to fall asleep each night, either slept 8-10 hours straight and woke up tired. Always tired is how I would describe the past 15 years. Thankfully, this problem is slowly going away as I fall asleep faster with pills, and have regenerative sleep now. I wake up earlier in the morning, and I do not feel as tired as I used to. Some mornings I even feel in great shape and full of energy. It does not happen often though, but it’s worth it for the few times it does happen.

ETA : before, I used over-the-counter drugs made of Dipenhydramine (antihistaminic). It was effective but I felt like a zombie the day after. I do not have this side effect with clonazepam.

@mcarey2: My heart goes out to you. I’ve had insomnia since I was 12 and I’m 25. I had sleep studies done and thye diagnosed me with a bunch of things – delayed sleep phase syndrome, etc. The only treatment option was to be hospitalized and have to stay up for 24 hours and then go to bed 1 hour later each night. After you completed the treatment, you had to get up at the EXACT same time everyday, or else you’d have to repeat the treatment. I was in college at the time so there was no way that was happening. They removed my tonsils and adenoids just in case that was affecting my sleep. It wasn’t and I went through that painful surgery for nothing (I still get sick often). I was prescribed Lunesta and Ambien, both of which I became immune to after 2-3 nights.

My sleep doctor recommended I buy a light box and look at it for 20 minutes upon waking each morning. It didn’t help and gave me a migraine.

So now I take melatonin (3 mg) 2-3 hours before bed, and two benadryl 1 hour before bed. My sleep doctor wanted me to discontinue using both because the long-term side effects aren’t known, but it’s the only thing that helps. I’ve been using this regimen for 3 years now.

@mcarey2: My heart goes out to you. I’ve had insomnia since I was 12 and I’m 25. I had sleep studies done and they diagnosed me with a bunch of things – delayed sleep phase syndrome, etc. The only treatment option was to be hospitalized and have to stay up for 24 hours and then go to bed 1 hour later each night. After you completed the treatment, you had to get up at the EXACT same time everyday, or else you’d have to repeat the treatment. I was in college at the time so there was no way that was happening. They removed my tonsils and adenoids just in case that was affecting my sleep. It wasn’t and I went through that painful surgery for nothing (I still get sick often). I was prescribed Lunesta and Ambien, both of which I became immune to after 2-3 nights.

My sleep doctor recommended I buy a light box and look at it for 20 minutes upon waking each morning. It didn’t help and gave me a migraine. I do all the proper sleep hygeine things – have a routine before bed, no working out 3 hours before going to sleep, no caffeine, rarely drink alcohol, dimming the lights in the house when it gets late.

So now I take melatonin (3 mg) 2-3 hours before bed, and two benadryl 1 hour before bed. My sleep doctor wanted me to discontinue using both because the long-term side effects aren’t known, but it’s the only thing that helps. I’ve been using this regimen for 3 years now.